2009-2010 Reading Series

Aracelis GirmayPoetry Reading

Monday, November 23, 2009

Wendell Will Room (inside Stockwell-Mudd Library)5:30 p.m.

Aracelis Girmay is the winner of the 2009 GLCA New Writers Award for Teeth, a collection of poetry that reflects her Eritrean, Puerto Rican, and African American traditions. Nicholasa Mohr writes, "The poems of Aracelis Girmay ring out with a burning truth as she transports the reader into the world of despair, discrimination, sorrows, triumphs, joy, and the courage it takes to flourish as a woman of color." Martin Espada calls her poetry "hard, cutting, brilliant, beautiful. . . so strong, so brave, so lyrical, so fiery, so joyful, that the usual superlatives fail." A former Watson fellow and Cave Canem fellow, Girmay has published extensively in journals and literary magazines including Ploughshares, Indiana Review, and Callaloo, and is the author of a children's book, Changing, Changing: Story and Collages. Born and raised in Southern California, Girmay now leads community writing workshops throughout California and New York.

A reception and book-signing will immediately follow the reading.

Co-sponsored by the English Department and Stockwell-Mudd Library.

Melissa DelbridgeCreative Nonfiction Reading

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Wendell Will Room (inside Stockwell-Mudd Library)5:30 p.m.

Melissa Delbridge ("...honest, funny, and fiercely Southern..." – Poets & Writers magazine) has won awards from the Southern Humanities Review and the Southern Women Writers Conference for her nonfiction and fiction. A native of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, she works as an archivist at Duke University. In her essay collection, Family Bible (University of Iowa Press, 2008), she explores themes of race, gender, and sexuality as they impacted her life in the 1960s and 1970s.

A reception and book-signing will immediately follow the reading.

Co-sponsored by the English Department and Stockwell-Mudd Library.

A. Van Jordan and Blas Falconer2010 Wilson Poets

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Olin 1126:10 PM

A. Van Jordan is the author of three poetry collections: Quantum Lyrics; M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A, which won the Anisfield-Wolf Award and was listed as one of the Best Books of 2005 by The Times of London; and Rise, which won the Josephine Miles PEN/Oakland award.

He has received many awards for his poetry, including a Whiting Writers Award, Guggenheim Fellowship, and Pushcart Prize. His poems have appeared in various literary journals and anthologies, including Crab Orchard Review, Seneca Review, and Poetry 30: An Anthology of Thirty Poets in Their Thirties.

Blas Falconer is the author of the poetry collection A Question of Gravity and Light, and a chapbook The Perfect Hour. He is also the co-editor of both Mentor and Muse: Essays from Poets to Poets (forthcoming 2010) and The Other Latina/o: Diverging Lines in the New Canon (forthcoming 2011).

He has received several awards for his poetry, most recently the Maureen Egan Writers Exchange Award from Poets & Writers. His poems have appeared in various literary journals, including Crab Orchard Review, Puerto del Sol, Luna, Indiana Review, and Green Mountains Review.

A reception and book-signing will immediately follow the reading.

Sponsored by the Department of English and made possible by a generous donation from Mr. and Mrs. C. Thomas Wilson.

2008-2009 Reading Series

Andy MozinaFiction Reading

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

I-House Auditorium5:10 PM

Andy Mozina, this year's winner of the GLCA New Writers Fiction Award, is the author of the short story collection The Women Were Leaving the Men, a finalist for the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction. Author Laura Kasischke describes the book as "both humorous and haunting. Mozina possesses both an ironic sensibility and a real compassion for characters in their human conditions." He is also the author of the critical work Joseph Conrad and the Art of Sacrifice, and his short stories have appeared in numerous literary journals, such as Tin House, Alaska Quarterly, and Fence. The title story, "The Women Were Leaving the Men," received special mention in The Pushcart Prize (2006) and was named a distinguished story in The Best American Short Stories 2005. Mozina is currently an associate professor of English at Kalamazoo College.

A reception and book-signing will immediately follow the reading.

Co-sponsored by the English Department and Stockwell-Mudd Library.

John RybickiPoetry Reading

Thursday, November 6, 2008

I-House Auditorium5:30 PM

John Rybicki's latest collection of poems, We Bed Down Into Water, is available from Northwestern University Press. One of the poems from the collections was selected for The Best American Poetry 2008. He is also the author of Traveling at High Speeds (New Issues Poetry and Prose). His poems have appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, Field, and others. Rybicki travels the land teaching adults and children alike about the holiness of a sentence. He also works for Wings of Hope hospice teaching poetry writing to children who have been through a trauma or loss. He is a widower and the father of an extraordinary boy.

A reception and book-signing will immediately follow the reading.

Co-sponsored by the English Department and Prentiss M. Brown Honors Institute.

Bonnie Jo CampbellFiction Reading

Thursday, November 6, 2008

I-House Auditorium5:30 PM

Bonnie Jo Campbell is the author of Q Road and Women and Other Animals (winner of the AWP prize for short fiction), and co-editor of Our Working Lives. Her short stories have been published in numerous literary journals including Story, The Southern Review, Mid-American Review, and Michigan Quarterly Review. Campbell lives with her husband and other animals outside Kalamazoo.

A reception and book-signing will immediately follow the reading.

Sponsored by the English Department.

Danit BrownFiction Reading

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

I-House Auditorium5:10 PM

Danit Brown is the author of Ask for a Convertible (Pantheon), a collection of linked short stories. Her fiction has appeared in many literary journals, including Story, Glimmer Train, Story Quarterly, and One Story.

A reception and book-signing will immediately follow the reading.

Sponsored by the English Department.

Natasha Trethewey2009 Wilson Poet

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Norris 1017:10 PM

Natasha Trethewey's most recent collection is Native Guard, for which she won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. She has also published Domestic Work, which won the inaugural 1999 Cave Canem poetry prize (selected by Rita Dove), a 2001 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Book Prize, and the 2001 Lillian Smith Award for Poetry. Her second book, Bellocq's Ophelia, received the 2003 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Book Prize, was a finalist for both the Academy of American Poets' James Laughlin and Lenore Marshall prizes, and was named a 2003 Notable Book by the American Library Association. She is the recipient of various fellowships, including a Guggenheim and a National Endowment for the Arts grant. Her work has appeared in journals such as Agni, American Poetry Review, Callaloo, Gettysburg Review, and Kenyon Review, as well as anthologies such as The Best American Poetry. Trethewey holds an M.F.A. from the University of Massachusetts and is the Phillis Wheatley Distinguished Chair in Poetry at Emory University.

A reception and book-signing will immediately follow the reading.

Sponsored by the Department of English, the Anna Howard Shaw Women's Center, the Ethnic Studies Program, and made possible by a generous donation from Albion alumni Mr. and Mrs. C. Thomas Wilson.

Ander MonsonCreative Nonfiction Reading

Monday, March 16, 2009

I-House Auditorium5:10 PM

Ander Monson, winner of the 2008 GLCA New Writer Award for creative nonfiction, is the author of Neck Deep and other Predicaments, described by John D'Agata as "unapologetically smart, unexpectedly emotional, and playful in ways that most nonfiction never attempts." The American Book Review writes, "Neck Deep should be read by anyone who cares about new developments in nonfiction." Monson is also the author of the novel Other Electricities, a finalist for the New York Public Library's Young Lions Award, and the poetry collection Vacationland. He edits the magazine DIAGRAM and the New Michigan Press. He recently moved from Michigan to Tucson, Arizona, where he teaches at the University of Arizona.

A reception and book-signing will immediately follow the reading.

Sponsored by the Department of English and Stockwell-Mudd Library.

Helena MesaPoetry Reading

Thursday, April 16, 2009

I-House Auditorium5:10 PM

Born and raised in Pittsburgh to Cuban parents, Helena Mesa is the author of Horse Dance Underwater, a collection of poems. She is also the co-editor for Mentor & Muse: From Poets to Poets (Southern Illinois University Press, 2010); her poems have appeared in various literary journals, including Barrow Street, Bat City Review, Indiana Review, Pleiades, and Third Coast. She holds an M.F.A. from the University of Maryland and a Ph.D. from the University of Houston. Helena is an assistant professor in the English Department at Albion College.

A reception and book-signing will immediately follow the reading.

Sponsored by the English Department.

2007-2008 Reading Series

Jay HoplerPoetry Reading

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Wendell Will Room (inside theStockwell-Mudd Library)5:10 p.m.

Jay Hopler, this year's GLCA New Writer for Poetry award winner, is the author of Green Squall, which was chosen by poet Louise Glück for the 2005 Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition. His poems have appeared in various literary journals, including Boulevard, Colorado Review, The Iowa Review, The New Yorker, and Ploughshares. He holds degrees from the John Hopkins Writing Seminars and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Hopler was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and presently lives and teaches at the University of South Florida.

A reception and book-signing will immediately follow the reading.

Co-sponsored by the English Department and Stockwell-Mudd Library.

Tony D'SouzaFiction Reading

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

I-House Auditorium5:10 p.m.

Tony D'Souza, this year's GLCA New Writer for Fiction award winner, is the author of Whiteman (Harcourt), which received the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has contributed to The New Yorker, Playboy, Salon, Esquire, Outside, The O.Henry Awards, Best American Fantasy, McSweeney's, Tin House, and elsewhere; he has also appeared on Dateline, The Today Show, the BBC, NPR, and other venues. The Konkans, his second novel, is now available.

D'Souza was born and raised in Chicago. He holds degrees in writing from Hollins University and the University of Notre Dame; he also served three years in the Peace Corps in West Africa, where he was a rural AIDS educator.

A reception and book-signing will immediately follow the reading.

Co-sponsored by the English Department and Stockwell-Mudd Library.

Julianna Baggott2008 Wilson Poet

Thursday, April 17, 2008

I-House Auditorium7:00 p.m.

Novelist Madison Smartt Bell writes: "Few writers of the twenty-first century can rival the verve, the energy, and the sheer delight in language of Julianna Baggott." She is the author of three poetry collections, Compulsions of Silkworms and Bees, Lizzie Borden in Love, and This Country of Mothers, and four novels—Girl Talk, The Miss America Family, The Madam, and Which Brings Me to You: A Novel in Confessions (co-written with Steve Almond). She also writes children's novels under the pen name N.E. Bode, including The Anybodies and The Amazing Compendium of Edward Magorium. Her work has appeared in various journals and anthologies such as Poetry, The Southern Review, Triquarterly, and Best American Poetry. Baggott received her MFA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She teaches at Florida State University.

A reception and book-signing will immediately follow the reading.

Sponsored by the English Department and Albion alumni Mr. and Mrs. C. Thomas Wilson.